How Do The Nineteenth Century Short Stories You Have Read Deal With Horror Essay, Research Paper
How do the nineteenth century short
stories you have read deal with horror? How is the genre developed? ????????? ????????? Horror can be delivered through many
different ways, be it through gothicism, the psychological aspect or the
industrial view on horror. ????????? Bram Stokers writing involves
gothicism. He wrote many novels and short stories and amongst them was ?The
Squaw?. I think that Stokers vivid and graphic descriptions of death add more
aspects to his writing than just gothicism: ?but
the stone fell right on the kittens head and shattered out its little brains.? ????????? People usually associate gothicism with creepy haunted
houses or underground passages and secret stairways and that gothic writers
focus more on describing the scene than the characters and death. These are true,
but not necessarily to stoker. He sets the scene well and he also describes the
manner in which the characters died with an exceptional likeness to life.
Unlike the other authors that we have studied, Stokers characters have no clear
psychological uncertainties. Elias P Hutcheson comes across as a very arrogant
and racist character, and when he kills the cat?s kitten, the cat is set out
for revenge fueled by the hatred of Hutcheson: ??.
Launched herself at him as though hate and fury could lend her wings.? I think that stoker drops
subtle hints foreshadowing the fact that the cat is going to get revenge on
Hutcheson: ??.
Her eyes looked like positive murder? ????????? Stoker delivers an exceptional description of the Iron
Virgin which makes his writing all that more creepy and imaginative: ??. Placed in such a position that when the door should close the upper
ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his heart and
lungs.? ????????? I don?t think that the reader would
have any sympathy for Hutcheson when the Iron Virgin kills him and they will
think that he has finally got his comeuppance: ??. Had pierced so deep that they had locked in the bones of his
skull?. And tore him out of his own prison?????????? Edgar Allan Poe sends the horror genre in a new direction
that is somewhat different to that of Stokers methods of writing horror. He
does so by dealing more with the psychological viewpoint and what?s going on in
the characters head rather than the surroundings. In Poe?s writing there is not
so much focus on atmosphere but more on characterisation. ????????? ?In ?The tell-tale Heart? we are immediately introduced to a
protagonist who has a very nervous and indeed mad state of mind. This is
suggested to us as he tells the reader that he hears voices from out of this
world: ? I heard all things in heaven?. I heard many things in hell.? ????????? He denies his madness and I think that this covering up of
his madness is a most definate and obvious sign of madness. ????????? Similarly, in ?The Black Cat? the protagonist?s mind
becomes progressively worse and more perverse through his evident alcohol
abuse. In just the same way, he tries to say that he is not mad: ?Yet, mad I am not.? ????????? ?The Black Cat? I think also deals with the imagery that
Stoker conveyed, not as well as him but he does so in such a fashion that the
reader recognises that it is a horror story which they are reading: ??. Grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of
its eyeballs from its socket." ????????? In contrast to Stoker, Poe?s stories
involve investigations from the police that lead to the protagonists? madness
being shown full on as, under no pressure, they break down and confess to their
crimes. At the beginning of The tell-tale Heart, he tells us that he is cursed
with an acuteness of the senses: ??. Of hearing acute.? And this is then used
later on during his confession. I think that he confesses to it because he can
still hear the heart beating under the planks: ? ?Villains? I shrieked ?dissemble no more! I admit the
deed!-tear up the planks!-here, here!-it is the beating of the hideous heart!? ????????? As with ?The Squaw?, I think that there is also revenge on
the cats behalf in ?The Black Cat?. It is the cat that has driven him into
murder and it is then that cat that allows the police to discover that he has
murdered his wife and concealed her in the walls, by wailing out. But, it is
his fault for allowing the cat to wail out because it was him, through his
belief that he had got away with it and boasting about it, that he hit upon the
very same point in the walls where the body was concealed. We saw this mental
breakdown in ?The tell-tale Heart? and now we see it again here.